Detect risky keywords

Risky keyword detection scans a business’s web presence for terms tied to prohibited or high-risk activity. Industry classification verifies what a business does, but a business in an acceptable category can still sell prohibited products, and that activity often shows up in its own marketing or in customer reviews before anywhere else. Payment processors and platforms use risky keyword results to catch this conduct early, including the brand-damaging and illegal activity that card network enforcement programs like Mastercard BRAM (Business Risk Assessment and Mitigation) penalize.

How Middesk detects risky keywords

Risky keyword scanning runs as part of web presence analysis. Middesk scans the business’s website along with third-party profile content, including posts and reviews on platforms such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Yelp.

Middesk groups matches into results by category. Each result includes:

• The category of risky keyword and an explanation of why the category appears in the results.
• A severity of prohibited, needs_review, or ignore, set by the rules configured for your account. Middesk provides a default rule set, and you can tailor the categories, keywords, and severities to match your policy.
• One or more sources[], each with the url where the match was found, the matched_keywords, and a text_snippet of the surrounding content. The source_type field identifies where the content came from, and post and review sources also include a posted_at timestamp. See the Website reference for the full list of source types.

The following example shows one entry in risky_keywords_results[]:

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{
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  "category": "cannabis",
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  "explanation": "Multiple sources advertise THC vape products for sale.",
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  "severity": "prohibited",
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  "sources": [
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    {
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      "url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/aBc123XyZ45/",
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      "matched_keywords": ["thc", "vape"],
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      "text_snippet": "New drop: premium THC vape cartridges, available in store and online.",
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      "source_type": "instagram_recent_post",
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      "posted_at": "2026-06-14T18:22:05.000Z"
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    },
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    {
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      "url": "https://www.example.com/shop",
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      "matched_keywords": ["thc"],
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      "text_snippet": "Shop our full range of THC products, glassware, and accessories.",
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      "source_type": "website",
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      "posted_at": null
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    }
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  ]
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}

How to use risky keyword results